[Our current Staples brand diskettes at work weigh ~14.66 grams apiece as a comparison.]

So, the weight calculation in my post above remains valid.

* * * * * * * * * *

I also did a time study on my 486DX4/133 as to how long it would take to read/write and switch out diskettes for a typical Sierra game. Using King's Quest V, it turned out to be about 45 seconds: 41-42 seconds to read/write and 3-4 seconds to switch out the diskette and hit "Enter".

[Again for comparison, I was able to do it in 40 seconds on my P4/2.4GHz using DOSBox: 36-37 seconds to read/write and 3-4 seconds to switch out the diskette and hit "Enter".]

So, for 8,334 HD diskettes at ~45 seconds apiece, the total non-stop install time would be 6,250 minutes 30 seconds.

I never had a 286 system. We went from a Commodore 64 to a Packard bell 386 (had an external cd drive ... 1x lol ), then got a Packard Bell 486DX2. I think they just had bad startup settings as most games i needed to make a sierra boot disk for. And half the time that didn't even work. I hated those Packard Bells we had. I remember the satifaction of destroying the 386. The C64 had a faster loading time on games then that thing did. Only reason i even touched the thing was because my father got me a Collectors CD with Zak Mckraken/Maniac Mansion/Indiana Jones/ and Monkey Island. And the Zak game i had for the C64 was 2 disk and i always hated the switching sides of the disks and digging thru the drawers full of games i had for the commodore. Eventually the Drive switch on the 1541 drive broke and it wouldn't acknowledge a disk in the drive any more.

I used to find it funny that back then i was barely allowed to touch those PC's because my parents were afraid i'd break them. And know i'm the one getting all the calls on how to fix what they messed up LOL.

We went from a Radio Shack Color Computer (1982-1989) to the Packard Bell (1989).

While in college (1993/1994), I bought a no-name 486DX2\66 from the back of the Computer Shopper magazine. I often wonder how many forests were levelled to make that catalog, because back then, it was about the size of a phone book for a small metropolitan city -- and it came out EACH AND EVERY MONTH. The Computer Shopper had about the same number of articles it does today, but the remainder of the pages were filled with advertisements from every mom-and-pop who put together computers in their garage, or small companies who sold components so you could to build you own.

Remember, all you youngins' out there, this was during the pre-Internet Dark Ages -- the Computer Shopper with its tons of advertisements were why you bought the thing in the first place: it was by far the easiest place to source computers and/or computer components. And with all the advertisers, the magazine was pretty inexpensive...

However, most of these independent builders have long since disappeared; thanks to the Internet, advertising is a pittance and performing in-depth seaches is only a mouse-click away. Now you're lucky if today's Computer Shopper is the size of a People magazine...

I think my dad bought another Packard Bell in the mid-to-late 1990s, but after that we all seemed to gravitate to HPs...

Last edited by goatmeal on Sun Sep 26, 2010 9:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Finally someone else who actually used a Color Computer back in the day! For so long I thought I was the only one! Everyone had their Commodore 64's and Amigas.

Yes! Did you ever have a subscription to Rainbow magazine?

I remember typing in pages of line basic to play (what looked like) a really neat game from the magazine, only to be confounded with line errors from my poor typing skills and lack of patience for debugging.

I was so happy when they started putting the programs on cassette (and later diskette) -- no more typing! Then I had to somehow convince my parents to pay extra for this terrific service...

My uncle, an electrician/electronics guy by trade, had an original CoCo from the late 1970s. This was the reason we got one, and a few of my relatives also got CoCo's -- if anything when wrong, my uncle could be called upon to fix it.

I remember he was so excited when he upgraded the onboard memory from 2k to 16k -- and back then, you had to be an electrician to do so: you had to desolder and remove the old chip, and then solder in the new memory module...

i was a little too young to remember anything before our commodore 64, i want to say my parents had an Atari computer prior to the Commodore 64, i was about 3 years old when we got the C64. And i remember my dad got the magazines with the lines of code you had to sit and type in too, and that job was always given to me at such a young age ( I was a nerd since birth lol). With all the EE 01 52 EF 05 stuff HAHAH, just to play a silly game that reminded you of a pong knock off.

We were one of those familys that would have something till it absolutly had to be replaced, i remember having the 486 for many years before my dad had to buy something newer for Autocad to work. I don't remember what he bought tho. but he had that one for a while before he started getting E-machines. The 1st computer i ever paid for myself was an emachine 466mzh. I made that last for a long time since all i ever played on it was older games. I really never knew about upgrading or anything until American Mcgee's Alice came out and i had to get a video card cause i bought the game and found out it didn't work on my PC. So i bought another emachine, and killed it tinkering with the CPU fan. And now i Have my "Franken-Box" i built and have had for the past 7 years.

Haha, yeah I have a cassette drive and a 5.25" floppy drive. Still have tons of disks and tapes with tons of games on them. I have a whole stack of Rainbow Magazines. I guess my dad typed most of them in and saved them to disk back then, though. Recently I tried typing in a whole game....it didn't take long before something came up and had to abandon it. I had the patience, just not the time! I also have a bunch of cartridges for the thing. What a wondrous machine.

Oh man, I can't believe I'm in college and there's a guy who seriously makes fun of my clothes and my weight. I feel like I'm back in Jr. High haha. It doesn't bother me so much as weird me out, I completely forgot people could even act like that.

Yeah, it seems a little rediculous for someone to be like that nowadays. You'd figure people would have more important things to concern themselves with when you are over the age of i don't know 14. Some people are just immature. Those are the kinda of people that died for attention in high school and tried to make themselves feel more important then they are by putting other people down.

Exactly, and it's kind of funny because I can remember a time when this sort of thing would have gotten to me but now I just kind of look at them sideways and have to wonder what they were really hoping to accomplish by talking to me this way. Even if we pretend I had low enough self esteem that this would have any real effect, well then what? Why would anyone care if I went home at the end of the day feeling worthless? Nothing would change, I'd still be myself at school the next day. Yeah I might eventually end up with a lower sense of self worth, but I don't understand what that would accomplish. Especially in the eyes of someone I don't hang out with regularly (he is a friend of a friend so he does hang out with us occasionally). I dunno, the best I can think of is that he just doesn't like me and wants to be mean. In which case nothing is accomplished at all. It all seems so....pointless.

Oh man, I can't believe I'm in college and there's a guy who seriously makes fun of my clothes and my weight. I feel like I'm back in Jr. High haha. It doesn't bother me so much as weird me out, I completely forgot people could even act like that.

Lady Pyro wrote:

I dunno, the best I can think of is that he just doesn't like me and wants to be mean. In which case nothing is accomplished at all. It all seems so....pointless.

I'll take the opposite approach --

Sounds like he likes you, but can't express himself any other way.

I know I was like that... If I liked you, I teased you; if I didn't like you, I wouldn't talk to you.

But...But...College...not Jr. High! I'm willing to admit, human courtship rituals are a little beyond me. When I like a guy I usually just tell him straight up and see where it goes from there. It confuses me that someone would express their affection by making me angry. Unless it's a case of "any attention is good attention" but even then...Does this mean that some people never outgrow that? Because I don't think I can put up with this forever. I mean, I tease my friends, but that's because we're friends and we know what will hurt and what will be laughed off. I worry about any guy that thinks "Holy shit have you put on a lot of weight" is a great pick up line. Yesterday he hung around with us and decided to shut me out of every conversation, interrupting everything I said with "I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to (insert other friend's name)" Even when he wasn't the one to initiate the conversation. Again, it didn't stop me from talking (I just flipped him off and kept going haha), but it definitely doesn't make me want to be friends with him, let alone anything more. People are perplexing

Billet, you are now officially a brat for even suggesting that! How maddening! The worst part is, with this guy I will probably never know. I was told by our mutual friend that he's never straight up with people. Sigh. Oh well, at least I can draw better than him (not that I'd ever say that out loud), and that makes me feel better in a really petty sort of way.

Haha, I act like a brat but i'm pushing 30 right now, all i was saying was because you get older doesn't mean you grow up. Like Goatmeal was saying, some people have that "They like you, they don't know how to handle it so they tease you and say things like that" kinda attitude and never grow out of acting that way. But at the same time, You say you can draw better then him and that might secretly piss him off LOL. :P Are you getting better grades too?

Thats men for you. My empiric study has shown me that oddly enough, about 20% of us never fully grow out of that 6-year-old mentality. Myself included from time to time in the past, ashamed as I am to admit it. And I have no idea why it happens. Maybe something just went horribly wrong when they were wiring our brains, hell if I know.

Then again, I'm filled up to my ears with cheap whiskey tonight so I'm not really sure what I'm trying to achieve with this message. I think I'll just listen a bit more of old New Orleans jazz and sleep my stupor away...

I am, and I completely forgot that he also got very worked up when I wouldn't show him my marks. I don't like to compare grades, especially in an art school. Art is so subjective and it's about what you get out of the exercise, not what arbitrary numbers someone else attaches to them (in my opinion). He actually grabbed away one of my pieces to check out the grade after I told him it was none of his business. I'd scored higher than him, but I really felt he didn't need to know that. The smug look on his face fell quite quickly and he didn't really have much to say afterward. Oh man, what a terrible attitude he has.

KKuhlman: That sounds like a fantastic way to spend the evening, if I didn't have so much homework I would quite eagerly consider the same.

Yeah i agree on the whole grades thing. How does a person really grade art anyway. When it comes to art isn't it to each idividuals interpretation of what art is? ( If you can't tell i completely failed every art class i was in LOL ) Apparently i was too drunk in school to draw a straight line. I was better in the music dept.

But yeah whatever your grades are is noone elses business unless they are having a conversation about them not understanding why they got the grade they got in like a comparison deal that you are willing to talk about.

I have a confession to make: I've been cheating on you with another forum. I'm so sorry, I still love you and we can still be friends but...but....I forgot how exciting a forum with a bujillion people could be! I love our little group and the things we say and bicker about, I think we're all really cool and interesting but...There's just so much going on elsewhere. Somedays I worry that all the romance is just gone out of our poor forum. I wont leave, I'll never leave but I feel you should know that there is another.

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